Bill Hand: Sleuthing the designer of Pepsi’s original logo

By Bill Hand, Sun Journal Staff

Published: Sunday, May 25, 2014 at 06:31 PM.

We all know that a New Bern pharmacist, Caleb Bradham, invented Pepsi-Cola, but who invented the logo?

The original logo, which was created soon after the drink’s 1898 inception and has survived in some form until late in the 1900s, was a bright red, fancy script with the “P” and “C” connected by a flowing banner.

Family tradition has long held that the designer was Bayard Wootten, the New Bern-born and raised photographer who became one of the South’s best-known women photographers of the early 20th century.

There has been oral tradition to support this. Her son, Charles, for instance, told her biographer, Jerry W. Cotton, “C. D. Bradham… lived next door to us. …He had mama design the Pepsi-Cola labels.”

Beyond family memories, tradition and the fact that Wootten and Bradham were neighbors, however, there’s been little to tie her to the logo’s design.

But evidence has recently turned up in the form of letters and other Wootten designs that gives more certainty to the claim.

While nothing has yet been found that states, in absolute terms, that the design is hers, the circumstantial evidence is growing in her favor.

We all know that a New Bern pharmacist, Caleb Bradham, invented Pepsi-Cola, but who invented the logo?

The original logo, which was created soon after the drink’s 1898 inception and has survived in some form until late in the 1900s, was a bright red, fancy script with the “P” and “C” connected by a flowing banner.

Family tradition has long held that the designer was Bayard Wootten, the New Bern-born and raised photographer who became one of the South’s best-known women photographers of the early 20th century.

There has been oral tradition to support this. Her son, Charles, for instance, told her biographer, Jerry W. Cotton, “C. D. Bradham… lived next door to us. …He had mama design the Pepsi-Cola labels.”

Beyond family memories, tradition and the fact that Wootten and Bradham were neighbors, however, there’s been little to tie her to the logo’s design.

But evidence has recently turned up in the form of letters and other Wootten designs that gives more certainty to the claim.

While nothing has yet been found that states, in absolute terms, that the design is hers, the circumstantial evidence is growing in her favor.

Anthony Lilly, a Washington state resident who is a New Bern native, could be called Wootten’s biggest fan. He arrived about a year ago, buying up a portion of Wootten’s original studio equipment and announcing he was writing a script about Wootten’s life that he planned to shoot in the area as a movie. It’s title: “Bayard Wootten: The Big Stride.”

Since then, the script has undergone a number of rewrites and, Lilly said, he has gotten commitments of $28 million toward his film — about $20 million short of what he needs.

He also has decided to open a museum focusing on Wootten, but also including memorabilia from her locally famous neighbor, Caleb Bradham. He has formed a 501(c) organization for this purpose.

It is his pursuit in this area that has led him to new evidence.

Lilly has been contacting Wootten family members — including Mary Barden and Celia Eudy, two of her nieces. (Eudy owns the house on East Front Street that Wootten grew up in.) He has been compiling donations and copies of Wootten’s correspondence, cameras and other memorabilia which he has been stuffing into an area storage building, where it sets waiting for a museum home.

Lilly said he made his most recent discoveries while digging through old chests and drawers in Barden’s and Eudy’s homes.

Before she took up photography in 1904, Wootten earned money through painting, illustration and design. A close examination of her business designs — particularly her own signature — show a marked similarity to the original logo.

Lilly came across a 1903 logo design for C.E. Foy, a family member who was starting up a local business, that especially show marked similarities in style.

Lilly released photocopies of a letter written by her mother to her Bayard’s half-brother, George Moulton, in January 1906. “When Dr. Caleb Was here Bayard did some work for him & he is very much pleased with it,” she writes.

The letter probably doesn’t refer to the original design, which had been drawn at least five years prior, but it does establish their working relationship.